Jim Devine wrote: > > there's another kind of shame punishment that the article did not > mention. Child molesters have their names and addresses listed on > web-sites even though they've served their time in prison. This leads > to shunning and worse, encouraging them to move out of town or change > their identities, but that can simply start the cycle again. Some > simply become homeless in order to avoid the shame. (Another type of > case: Dan White -- the that the guy who slew Harvey Milk and San > Francisco Mayor Moscone in 1978 -- ended up committing suicide in > shame.) > > there's got to be a better solution.
For juvenile offenders the best solution is that they not be caught. The second best is that they not be punished or punished only very very lightly. There was some research a couple decades ago that gave evidence for this. But had not one columnist written a column objecting I wouldn't ever have heard of it. It didn't get much publicity. Empirically (I don't know what the causal grounds are) it seems that the u.s. public is obsessed with "making people pay." Carrol
